JOHN Flynn Place, Cloncurry, a museum commemorating the beginnings of the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia, is about to launch a series of interactive exhibits. These will be officially opened by Hon. Tim Fischer, AC on 15 April.
The first exhibit ‘Honouring Outback Heroes’, sponsored by the Anzac Centenary Queensland grants program, will focus on four remarkable Australians who served in the First World War and contributed to improving the quality of life in the Outback, through either the Australian Inland Mission or its medical offshoot, the Flying Doctor Service.
In November 1917 Clifford Peel, a young medical student then serving in the Australian Flying Corps, wrote to John Flynn, the Mission’s founder, proposing that aviation be used to bring medical help to the Inland. Enthused by the letter, Flynn published it a year later in the Mission’s magazine The Inlander. Sadly, by then Peel had been shot down over France while on a reconnaissance mission and was never to know that his visionary scheme would become a blueprint for the Flying Doctor Service.
The other heroes honoured in the exhibit served in both distant battlefields and the Outback. Padre Jim Stevens of the Mission’s Pilbara Patrol (Western Australia), a veteran of the Boer War, enlisted again in the First World War as an army chaplain. After serving at Gallipoli, Rev. Stevens was attached to the Australian Infantry Brigade in France. In February 1917 he was hit by a shell at Bapaume, resulting in serious injuries. Though invalided to England, he was unable to recover from his wounds and died several months later.
Grace Francis, who also served in France, managed to survive the war to become one of the Australian Inland Mission’s best known nursing sisters. A staff nurse of the Australian Army Nursing Service, she served in British and Australian military hospitals treating battlefield casualties, experience that would equip her well for outback work. In 1923–25 Sister Francis became a foundation sister of the Mission’s Birdsville Hospital (Queensland) and in 1932–33 served at its Victoria River Downs Hospital (Northern Territory).
Eric Donaldson, a pioneer pilot of the Flying Doctor Service, learnt his flying skills as a member of the Royal Flying Corps; though a Queenslander, he travelled to England in 1915 to enlist there. Donaldson became one of the RAF’s most reliable Bristol fighter pilots. Wounded twice in air battles, he was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross. Later as a Flying Doctor pilot, he served in western Queensland from 1931 to 1937, based at Cloncurry.
Besides the Anzac Centenary exhibit, John Flynn Place will be launching other exhibits in April. ‘John Flynn’s Magic Lantern Slideshow’ will bring to life Flynn’s old projector with a slideshow featuring his own photographs. ‘Remembering Birdsville’s Sister Gilbert’ will recall a tragic episode in the early days of the Birdsville Hospital. ‘Wings over the Inland’ will record the various types of aircraft used by the Flying Doctor Service in Queensland over many decades. Later this year the last of the interactive exhibits will open, creating an Outback Theatre in the museum’s basement.